By Daniel de la Calle
Whether in our tangible daily slippers-and-ties lives or in our ever growing virtual internet browsing hours, we are often faced with opinions and discourses about the environment, about scientific work and data that are diametrically opposed to what we see and read everywhere. The environment has become a polarized political and economic discussion (specially in the USA) when it should not be either, and the message from one end tends to mostly deliver noise, distortion and denial as a ways to counteract scientific work and research. It often also wears the disguise of science. I am no man of science, was always told that math and chemistry were not in our family genes, so I have no scientific instruction and must admit it often times takes me a while of reading an article or an internet post to realize I am in the hands of a “Monckton”. What follows is all old news, you must have seen it and read about it, but this past weekend I finally watched John Abraham’s presentation “A Scientist Replies to Christopher Monckton” and thought it was my duty to post it here, even if it has been so long since that storm passed. Abraham calmly, with a gentle voice dissects during 73 minutes a previous lecture delivered by Christopher Monckton, a British aristocrat, arguably the most famous denier of climate change, of Ocean Acidification and of any environmental threat that might even cross your mind. Thanks to his scientific background and after devoting hundreds of hours to the task, John Abrahams wrote to the scientists and institutions “cited” on Monckton’s lecture and analyzed the graphs, debunking them one by one, showing scientific malpractice (not a surprise, since Monckton is no scientist and has never written a single peer-reviewed science paper on any topic), inaccuracies and made up information to support his proposals. Abrahams kind of did what I had secretly wished to find out: exactly how much truth is there behind a denier’s words. It is wonderful work and it deserves to be listened to, so HERE I include the link and encourage you to go to it. In slides 67, 68, 69 he talks about Ocean Acidification.
In case you do not know Monckton and his opinions, here is lecture at Saint Paul:
And here I also found Monckton’s raging response to Abraham’s presentation, at what I believe must be a radio show. No need to comment:
Finally I found the lecture titled “Critical Thinking on Climate Change: separating skepticism from denial”, by Dr. Richard Milne, particularly interesting and a good complement to the videos and presentations above:
